Moving Heaven & Earth

Weather was yucky for most of March, so we focused on things indoors. My big job was cleaning an original oil painting that I’ve been lugging around for decades. Cleaning an oil painting means working with a Q-tip and swabbing/cleaning one spot at a time. Since the painting is 5’x3-1/2′, it took most of the month. The first picture below somewhat shows midway the difference in the colors. The second is the final result.

Midway you can see the line between clean & unclean

The painting looks drab in the photos, but the colors are actually subtly vibrant.

Now that it’s finally warmer and non-wet, we figured out where our garden is going to be this year. It will be a 40′ x 20′ area for our first year.

I’m working the soil in the way my grandfather taught me — and the way his grandfather taught him, even though its a lot of work. Instead of attacking the area with a rototiller, this old method means digging in with a shovel and manually pulling out the weeds and sifting through the dirt, breaking up the clumps, and eliminating all roots from the soil.

Leaving the roots (whole or broken up), invites weed production later.

After the entire area is cleared of the weeds and their roots, then I will throw on top all the compost I’ve been making all winter and rototill everything together. Then let it rest for at least four days or until the next waxing moon (whichever is last) to begin planting. Here’s the before and after of one tiny corner.

This corner didn’t look too bad, so I started here

I will be planting the Three Sisters together in the traditional manner, but all the rest of the veggies (onions, tomatoes, etc) will be more-or-less in the modern rows. I’m debating whether to plant perenials like garlic in the garden area or in the herb bed or in a separate area near our planned barbeque area. What do you think?

Hate to admit this, but after cleaning that one little patch (shown above), I felt like I had been run over by a steam roller. Gads, I am soooo out of shape! Of course, my aches have nothing to do with the fact that I’m almost 70 years old — it’s just that I’m out of shape!

Domestic Triumphs

Its still a bit too cold to do much outside, so we’ve been focusing on acquiring items to prepare for the thaw as well as items for inside. Our favorite “shopping mall” are local thrift stores, and the treasures we find sometimes amaze us.

Here’s one of our found treasures — an oil painting that is perfect for our dining room. I was absolutely thrilled.

One of my kitchen challenges has always been my dish rack. I felt like I started playing Tetris, then evolved into a leaning tower of disaster. With breakable dishes and cups, the tower of freshly washed dishes really became interesting. Jim surprised me with a double-decker dishrack, which I now love, love, love.

Maybe if I bought instant everything instead of making food from scratch I wouldn’t be so overjoyed to have a double-decker dishrack. Makes washing and stacking my dishes so much easier!

My pantry was starting to get nightmarish, so I decided to get some of those racks for canned food. We live so far from town that we shop once each month, which means we buy in bulk. Sounds easy enough until we get home and try to organize it all in the pantry. I opted to get commercial-quality racks that had to be ordered from a restaurant supply. They arrived and had to be assembled.

This is what they looked like when I finally figured out how to translate Chinese-English instructions.

Stacks of boxes piled on each other that took a lot of room were converted into an organized dream that is space efficient and makes getting ingredients really easy to access.

We hope as the cold is starting to ease that we can do some real work soon. Meanwhile, I’m enjoying finding ways of maximizing every inch of our future home.

End of Insanity

Its amazing how relieved I am that this year is almost over. In fact, I think this picture best sums up how I feel about 2021.

Finally got to see the opthomologist and learned my problem started as a normal side affect of cataract surgery, but since the pandemic meant all eye clinics were closed for 14 months, something that would normally be easily addressed became a nightmare. Long/short: Minor laser surgery was done to correct the problem, am now off of the horrific mass of meds with all the debilitating side affects, and am now able to function “normally.” I will need eye drops every day from now on, but that is no big deal.

The huge cysts in my elbow have also been surgically removed, the cast is off, and am now able to use my arm again. Am still doing the final healing from the surgery, but I have full use of my arm, so I am thrilled.

As a result of being functional again, we have started working on the house again. Before getting to the home project, we spent a few days cruising thrift shops. The treasures we found are so thrilling! We found a wonderful electric washing machine that is also able to do dry cleaning. At a different thrift store we found the perfect sink and cabinet to replace the set in the bathroom. Lastly, we found a few things I thought I had lost forever.

Several years ago (when I still lived in Albuquerque), my apartment had been broken into. Jewelry was stolen, some of my suits, and my hand-crochet pillows (set of 4). I actually was able to find two of the four pillows! They said they don’t know who donated them, but I was more than happy to give them $5 to get these two back!

When we went and reviewed the property, we decided to focus on the bathroom. Again, what we thought would be a one day project to replace the tiny sink and collapsing cabinet became a week long mess. We discovered the plumbing was done wrong, so the piping had to be redone before we could install the new cabinet and faucet. The picture below shows a corner of the tiny bowl-sized sink and collapsing cabinet. Here’s the result of replumbing and installing new.

We decided to keep the old clawfoot tub, but we could see we would be having some issues there. Little did we know!

Not only does the wall require massive rework and repair, but the plumbing was the biggest surprise. The fixtures are going to be replaced with fixtures made for a clawfoot tub, but we found out the plumbing from the floor and up was done with swamp cooler hoses, not pipes! This means poor Jim is going to have to tear out the wall in order to redo the shower as well as redoing all the other plumbing. We now know why the water never had any significant water pressure.

The beautiful old tub also needs TLC. After we moved it out of the corner we discovered that the legs, the underside and the side against the wall are rusted. We’ll patch the wall first as a joint effort. Thereafter, while Jim works on the plumbing, I’ll be sanding and cleaning the tub, coating it with Rustoleum and then spraying it with paint. All I have to do is remember to buy a wire brush the next time we’re in town….

Detour & Disaster

In June we were finally able to take a trip to Michigan to help my Mom clean out her basement and garage. We had planned to do this last year, but COVID happened. So this year, we hit the road and brought our little trailer along. What a mess!

It took three over-flowing trailer loads to the dump yard to empty enough to make it possible to say we made a difference! The moldy, rotted garbage and useless stuff was amazing! Mom’s basement had flooded and all the stuff down there had obviously not survived very well. The roof on Mom’s garage had leaked, so stuff in there had not faired well either. All I can say is, there was no way for Mom to have been able to do this by herself!

Then the fun of packaging everything else for the Salvation Army to pick up, at least what she didn’t want or need. If Jim and I were to load up the trailer and transport it, there was enough to make at least four trips with everything left! Amazing how much more there was. In total, it took 10 days of concentrated work.

On the last Sunday (Father’s Day), Mom, my brother (Mike) and I took a trip to the cemetery to visit my Dad’s grave. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than 30 years since he left us. We teased Mom that its time she start dating, but she said if we could find someone at least one year older that could “get it up,” she would — Mom is 94!!!

Our trip home was relatively uneventful unless you consider that the main highways were closed due to high winds in excess of 70 mph so we had to take side roads. Our little trailer was loaded up with items that Mom had been saving for me, like my old drafting/art table and peddle sewing machine, canning jars, and some of Dad’s tools that Mom gave Jim.

Now to explain the disaster. Some time ago I had cataract surgery. Everything went fine for the right eye. The left eye had “minor” complications, but the MD said everything turned out fine.

Shortly thereafter I started developing headaches and severe earaches. Allergist said I was allergic to dogs and cats and prescribed mild antihistamines to take daily. Headaches and earaches not only continued, but started to accelerate to at least a couple times each week.

By the time of the trip, the pain would last for a few hours each day and caused the loss of sight in my left eye and loss of hearing in my left ear. By the time I got home, the pain was unrelenting and I ended up in an Emergency Room.

They ran all kinds of tests. Thankfully, no tumors, brain bleeds or anurythm. A neuro-opthomologist was called. After a quick examination he said that a quick cursory exam looks like the surgery was okay but it was obvious something went wrong and that a thorough examination would need to be made in order for repairs to be made. The pain was caused by the fact that my eye ball was completely drying out which caused nerve damage, which affects the nasal passages, which also affected the ear drums and jaws — hence, the debilitating migraines.

Well, due to COVID, I had not been able to see my opthomologist after the cataract surgery, but a follow-up appointment had been made in November 2020 for August 2021, so next month I’ll hopefully be able to begin to see the end of this tunnel. Meanwhile, I’m on tons of meds to try to control the migraines, I sleep about 18 hours each day, am unable to do much more than sit, go potty, and drink coffee, and poor Jim is stuck taking care of everything. I want to nominate him for sainthood.

This, of course, means that absolutely nothing is getting done on the house. My poor critters are getting fed, but barely tended to otherwise. My patience with myself is running thin, and I am praying that my doctor has a solution to all this that will not take too long. The only other option that I can think of to enable us to be able to move into our home this fall is to win the lottery so we can pay someone to do the work for us or if the Walmart family thinks we are a worthy investment and finances our endeavor……

Yeah, yeah, maybe my meds are making me delusional..…

Improvise, Improve, Invent

Have been so busy I haven’t had a moment’s quiet, so haven’t been able to post the latest and greatest. Sorry about this minor delay in updates! I will now give the highlights.

We finished repairing the walls and ceiling of the dining room. Jim took the extra coral paint we used in the kitchen, mixed it with white paint and managed to come out with a pastel coral. I am absolutely thrilled with the results!

I also finished and put up the crochet curtain for the French door. It puckers in the center, so to insure that the finished work actually fits the door, it was taped in place. Now the challenge of figuring out how to make it lay straight all the way down. If anyone has any suggestions, I sure would appreciate it!

To continue the work, especially in adding a walk-in closet for the bedroom and redoing the roof, we are going to need wood. Have you checked out the price of wood right now? Just for basic materials we would practically have to take out a mortgage. After the shell shock wore off we brain-stormed. The decision was to remove the porch on the trailer we are presently living in — the wood is in almost perfect shape, so the tear down has begun.

After tearing down the roof and sides, Jim pulled out our hot tub, which he is going to install later at the house. We were able to acquire a lot of reusable materials!

In this picture you can see the old, non-functioning hot tub that was there just beyond ours. The spot of the old hot tub will one day be my utility room and our tub will be installed after we put in new flooring, plumbing, etc. Yeppers, too much work to consider right now, but one day our dream will be a reality.

Our old and fully-functional hot tub — a future installation project

I also am sad to report that one of my favorite chickens, Drama Queen, passed away. I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but she was over nine years old and had not been laying eggs for quite some time. We have several “retired” hens that continue to teach the younger ladies and live a relatively pampered life. My Drama Queen was particularly affectionate and was always doing something to make me smile. So, I sure do miss her!

Warm Weather Begins

It’s no longer a mild Arctic region — temps in the 70s & 80s most days. I’m loving it! On one of the warmer days we were using the hoses to start softening the soil in preparation of gardening efforts. Well, one of our porkers (Wilbur), who is solid white with a few black spots, pulled a Houdini and got out of the chicken/pig run. Not a problem, except he wanted to cuddle after finding those great wet spots …..

We finished sealing the dining room ceiling and have painted it white (versus dark colors). The room looks so much bigger, the drafty feeling is gone and it now echoes in there!

The debate has begun as to what color to paint the dining room walls. Really kind of funny. I jokingly suggested lime green with flourescent orange trim. My poor hubby. Thought his eyes were gonna leave the sockets. I’ll take pictures to show the end result later!

Our other big challenge has been installing a door on the bedroom. To my delight, Jim put in a French door — am so excited about it. I’m almost done crocheting a curtain for it, which I’ll proudly show off when done!

Next on the agenda is finishing up the kitchen, then the living room. By then it should be warm enough to do the roof. In between all that, prep and plant the garden.

I keep telling myself to not worry about the shopping list of to-do’s but focus on one thing at a time. Anyone have hints on how to productively exercise patience?

Drama Queen & The Sky is Falling

Our humble on-going project of getting the house ready to live in never fails to surprise. For those that don’t already know — Jim is disabled and after working an hour or two, he has to stop to rest. After a few of the necessary rest periods, he has to quit for the day. If he pushes too hard, he gets laid up for days, so to answer the question posed by a few folks — its taking a while to get everything done because of physical limitations. I have zero mechanical ability and poor Jim is a loveable gimp.

We planned on filling in the gaps between the boards of the ceilings first, but with the cold weather Jim thought we should check out the insulation. It seemed that the house kept getting cold rather quickly despite fixing all the holes in the exterior walls and sealing the windows. **sigh**

We crawled up there and discovered the planks held some trash and about 1/8 inch of dusty dirt, most of which kept leaking through the cracks between the planks into the house. We also discovered that the propanel metal sheets were nailed onto the roof beams without backing or sealing, so there are huge holes letting in the rain, snow and cold air.

We have an old house trailer that we have been stripping for materials (i.e., the kitchen cabinets). So we spent one day taking down the ceiling tiles, ripping out the plastic sheeting, and removing the insulation..

Early the next morning we carted the insulation to the house and coated the entire attic with the insulation. Since we plan on doing the roof this summer, we are not going to worry about all the excess “ventilation” right away. We have noticed a significant difference already. Now we plan on returning to the job of caulking all the gaps between all the planks in the ceiling, then painting.

Meanwhile, my “ladies” never fail to entertain me. Whenever one of my chickens is ill or injured, I utilize a cat carrier that is lined with straw and paper strips. I put the sickie in the carrier, bring it into the house, and they have a quiet corner with a food dish loaded with goodies and a water dispenser — all to themself. Usually the sickie spends one full day (a few rare times more than one day) and when they improve, they rejoin the colony outside.

Well, I recently tended to an injured rooster and a few days later I discovered one of my hens was limping. I watched her for a while, then checked her feet and legs to be sure. She seemed to be okay and I let her stay.

The next day when I went into the chicken run, this one hen took a few steps, flopped over and refused to move any further. I really got worried and went to check her. She cooed when I picked her up to inspect her legs and feet. I didn’t see anything wrong, put her back down and went to prepare the cat carrier despite not knowing what could be wrong.

Before returning I looked out the window and guess who was running, jumping and scurrying around for the scratch and dried worms with the rest of the ladies…. yep, you guessed it. My “wounded” lady was doing fine — until I went back outside and approached the chicken run. All of a sudden, she stopped, dropped and drooped her head while watching me closely.

I decided to leave her out there that day. The next day, sure enough, when she saw me, she was just pitiful. When I was out of view, she was doing just fine. No one ever told me that chickens could be drama queens!

Let There Be Heat!

We were cleaning and doing some work in the bedroom and decided we were tired of shivering. So, we decided to drag in some wood and start a fire in the beautifully ornate woodburning stove in the corner.

This was the woodburner in the bedroom (before wall repair and paint

Well, we discovered there was no flue, so all the heat went up the pipe. Then we discovered something even worse. The stove was cracked and had spots we hadn’t noticed that were holes. So we could see the light from the flames through the cracks, and there were some small flames coming out the sides! Gadzooks, we panicked and put out the fire as quickly as we could! Time for strategizing a solution.

Took a little thought, but we decided to bring in one of our small potbelly stoves and replace the one in the bedroom. It took some grunt work and redoing the pipes, but the replacement is now in place and it works great!

Fired up with tray open on bottom to get the wood ignited and start the heat-up.

It doesn’t have all the ornate scroll work, but it fits larger pieces of wood, Jim installed a flue, and fired it up. Wow, it heated the bedroom and the dining room.

We also installed a propane heater in the bathroom. Its a wall-mounted propane heater. Jim spliced into the propane line that goes to the dryer in order to connect to the propane.

The wall-mounted heater is radiant heat and works great!

When we fire up the heater in the bathroom, it makes a real cozy environment for taking a shower or bath. If we keep the door open, it heats both the bathroom and kitchen. I’m loving this!

Now we can work in the house without having to limit ourselves to 1-2 hours because of the cold. We can work all day and really get things done. I’m so excited about all the little steps of progress!

The Work Goes On

With things being as they are (virus protocols), we will not be having family coming out to visit this year, nor are we planning on anything extra for the holidays. Instead, we continue to work at getting the house livable and we intend to make next year’s holidays super duper!

So what are we doing now? Focusing on the ceilings. The crawl space under the roof has little to no insulation and the ceilings are lined-up planks with space between them. Guess where the heat goes! So we are giving the ceilings one quick base coat of paint, sealing the cracks, then finishing up with a second coat of paint. We have almost finished the dining room and have already noticed a BIG difference!

We plan on replacing the entire roof in the Spring/Summer, so we’ll be putting in plenty of insulation then. Meanwhile, sealing the numerous cracks should help (we hope).

We also are having a large propane tank installed to fuel the dryer and stove. Before the tank could be delivered, we had to provide a flattened area for the tank to sit. Jim did a great job leveling a spot in the location the propane company specified. While the roof is removed, we hope to install piping for a couple of propane heaters in a few rooms as well. We are determined to be prepared for living in our home next winter!!

Last big development — we have a new family member! Meet Lady Bird (she tries to talk and it sounds like bird chirping). She’s a lab mix and about 4 months old. She will be our “outside” dog one day to guard our property. I know, I know, labs are not vicious. But, we don’t want vicious — we want protective and noisy.

She is surrounded by Chihuahuas, and at this time, our smallest Chi (named Princess Peaches & Cream — Peach, for short) is her bestest friend. Cracks me up how they play together.

One thing I’ve seen however, Lady is almost as bad as my pigs. She’s always on the prowl for something edible. Anything laying around is going to get chewed on (including cords, shoes, pens, etc.). And, she loves to run. Even when she trips over her own feet, she covers the entire acre in seconds flat! Lady is so lovable and cuddly.

That’s it for December. Here’s hoping and praying everyone stays safe for the holidays, and please, please — wear your mask until the dangers of dying of this awful disease has ended! Hugs to all.

Never a Dull Moment

We have yet to recover our Jeep or have any word whether it has been found, but we continue to hope.

My surviving tomatoes are soaking up the sun

With the change in weather, some of the work has slowed down and the few tomato plants I was able to save were put into the sun room. I knew outside they would freeze at night and the sun room has great windows! After squirrels attacked everything, I was not sure I would be able to nurse these few survivors into fruition, but there is hope!! My efforts have been rewarded! I have some tomatoes.

Just look at how big they’ve gotten. They are heirloom purple tomatoes, so are super sweet and meaty (knowledge from past experience). The first three tomatoes that I’ve harvested I’m saving for seeds — I have high hopes for next year. The remainder I stroke, murmur to, and wait in anticipation of being ready to pick. Although I won’t have enough for canning this year, you can rest assured that they will be lovingly sliced and appreciated with plenty of lip smacking!

One unforeseen occurrence — it actually snowed here last month. Broke all kinds of records for our area. I know, I know. Snow in October is not headline news in most of the world, but in this little corner of New Mexico, it was extraordinary. Snow flurries here means everything shuts down, including roads and highways. We got a few inches of snow, so the shut downs were for a couple days before the sun was able to melt everything.

Well, as the snow melted, the roof leaked, and soaked the walls in the sunroom. This happened when we weren’t there, so when we were finally able to get to the house, we found a huge section of the wall by the ceiling had collapsed onto packed boxes. Such a mess!

We have been using the sun room for storage of boxes while the rest of the house is being worked on, and to put the tomato plants so they get plenty of sun. I am sooooo grateful the part of the wall that collapsed missed my beloved tomatoes.

With almost all the holes that exposed the inside to the outside being repaired, the difference inside is amazing. We heat up the house and within a few hours (after the adobe walls warm up), the house is so toasty and comfortable! I am soooo looking forward to being able to live there. We just have to fix the roof next spring!

LeeFran Homestead

Surviving & Thriving in the Country